


spirals in the dark

by angelwingz21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Dean's Stubbornness, Drinking, Drug Use, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, More characters to come, More relationships to come, Smoking, This will go slow, more tags to come, underage everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelwingz21/pseuds/angelwingz21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fourteen-year-old Dean Winchester meets a twenty-year-old Castiel Novak one night after just barely pulling back from the edge of a nervous breakdown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dean meets Cas

_November, 1993_

.

.

Dean Winchester meets Castiel Novak one night after just barely pulling back from the edge of a nervous breakdown.

He’s fourteen years old, and scrubbing away at the greasy filth stuck to the frying pan. It’s his fault, really, that this turned into a nearly impossible mission. Because last night, as he made fried chicken and mac and cheese for his brother and himself, his mind decided to remember that there was a history test he was supposed to take first thing in the morning. So he’d cursed up a blue streak, begged Sammy to clean up as he shoved his share of the meal into his mouth as fast as possible, and had made a run for his backpack, hoping against hope that he had enough notes written down in his notebook to pass the damn test.

It seemed like he did, thank goodness, so he read and re-read every single inane historical fact and ‘important’ date his chicken scratched notebook had to offer well into the night. He forced his tired brain to memorize it all, every little detail shoved in there and locked tight, ready to be used as soon as the test was handed to him. He fell asleep at around three in the morning.

Dean thought he did well enough in the test, and the rest of the day passed by without much to look forward to. When school finished, he took the bus to Sammy’s grade school, picked him up, and took another bus to get home. His little brother was excited about some project the teacher had assigned the students, and he wouldn’t shut up about it. The kid had shot off up the stairs to their crappy apartment complex like a bullet, and nearly rammed down the door to their place with the force with which he barreled into it. As soon as Dean opened the entrance to their home, Sammy took off into his room, yelling over his shoulder that he wasn’t to be bothered until he finished the project. It was due in only two days, after all.

The blonde teenager had stared, sighed, shaken his head, and then meandered his way over to the kitchen. It’s as he was trying to decide if those frozen burger patties in the fridge were worth making, that he noticed the stove. There were grease splatters from the fried chicken covering every inch of the top, the frying pan full of congealed oil was sitting disgustingly on one burner, while the casserole with dried up mac and cheese sat on the other. Dean groaned, and then armed himself with kitchen detergents, sponges, brillo pads, and paper towels.

So as he’s scrubbing away at the frying pan, the casserole patiently waiting for its turn, he blames no one but himself for failing to remember that Sam kept forgetting that the stove is part of ‘doing the dishes.’ He shouldn’t have put a ten-year-old in charge of kitchen clean-up duty. Just because he's been able to keep an entire house fucking spotless at Sam’s age, did not mean that the kid can do the same. It is Dean’s responsibility to care for these types of things. Dad had put him in charge, not little Sammy, who still needed to have someone check under the bed and in the closet for monsters. And isn’t that just horrible? Sammy is too old for that kind of thing, but Dad had been gone for months now, and the man is the only one capable of keeping those ridiculous fears completely at bay. When it’s just Dean, Sammy just begs and begs to have his brother check and double check and triple check for monsters, and he’s probably going to ask him to do it tonight, because it’s Friday, and for some reason his little brother thinks monsters’ favorite day is Friday, and what the hell is he doing here on a Friday, fucking cleaning the fucking kitchen with the old fucking grease, when at lunch he got invited for an early movie, because apparently there is some awesome party happening at What’s-her-name’s and the whole fucking school is supposed to be there, and god damn it, if he cooked those burger patties from the fridge then they wouldn’t have anything good for tomorrow, and then he’d have to spend the last of the money dad sent on groceries, when he’s been saving it for the gas bill, and he’s not getting paid at his waiter job where he lied and said he was sixteen until next Tuesday, and Dad’s last call was eight days ago when the man contacts them at regular four-day intervals, and—

It’s a wholly inhuman sound that escapes from Dean’s chest and out his throat. It’s a gasp, and a wail, and a growl, and a whine, and a shriek, and a hysterical laugh all rolled into one. It’s all out in the open for about a second and a half, before he remembers that his baby brother is just a few feet away in his room, and he forces his hand over his mouth, taking back the sound with a heavy swallow that makes him dizzy. Or maybe what makes him dizzy is the fact that he’s not breathing. But his chest is heaving, he can fucking feel his lungs expanding and contracting, fast and hard and—

A wail tries to get past the seal on his mouth, but Dean bites on his tongue, hard, until his eyes water and he’s falling sideways and thank god the fridge is right there to hold him up. He needs to get out, needs to breathe, can’t see the stove and the sink and the dishes without his chest threatening to explode. So he staggers away from it all, stumbles around like a drunk out back into the tiny living room, crossing it as fast as possible and crashing against the grimy glass door that leads to the little strip of balcony. He doesn’t know how he slides it open—he could’ve just broken the glass and gone through it, for all that he remembers—but the next thing he feels is the rough, cold bite of the rusting hand rail. He's gripping it so hard, his knuckles are turning white. He reckons that if he continues holding on so hard, his palms will bruise. He can imagine the result; one thick line of purple-black on each hand. He welcomes the pain, concentrates on it.

It’s seconds, minutes, hours, fucking days before his nose registers the acrid smell of cigarette smoke. It takes him a few tries to get his eyes to open and see, look, at where the smoke is coming from.

There’s a strip of balcony, identical to the one he’s standing immediately to his left. And in it is a man, lazily leaning against the railing, and staring at him. This man is tall, and slim, and paler than Dean, with a shock of dark hair, a scruffy beard, and too bright, too blue eyes. He looks no older than twenty and he’s got a cigarette hanging from between his lips.

Dean thinks he should frown. He thinks he should scowl and growl and demand to know what this man—his neighbor?—is fucking looking at. Instead the teenager just stands there, breath still going a little too fast, tremors wracking his body just slightly.

The man scans him—fucking scans him—from the tips of his hair to the toes of his scuffed boots, visible through the thin iron railings. He then cocks his head to the side and slowly, ever so slowly, the man’s lips thin and drag into this really flat smirk, and extends his a hand out across his own balcony to reach Dean.

It’s only when he’s presented with a battered cigarette pack not a foot away from his face does the teenager realize that the balconies are really close, and that this man is standing not three feet away from him.

“Take one,” the man says, and Dean wonders how much the guy’s smoked that day to get his voice to sound so rough. The man shakes the pack, and the blonde slowly turns his eyes down to look at it.

Dean thinks back to the first cigarette he ever tasted when he was twelve. He thinks about how he smoked his way through ten packs that year, tried to stop and then just went through eighteen more when he was thirteen. He’s almost two months away from being fifteen, and didn’t Mr. Norman from the biology class bring in a fucking rotten lung not three weeks ago?

It takes two tries to get his left hand to release the railing, and his whole arm fucking shakes like his nerves are fucking shot or something as he reaches for the pack.

The man keeps holding onto the box as Dean opens the top and grabs a fag with stiff fingers.


	2. Cas knocks on Dean's door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introduction to Castiel.

_November, 1993_

_._

_._

_._

It’s a bad day for Castiel. What was he expecting, though? For time to stop and wait up until he felt fucking ready to go back to classes?

Of course he didn’t understand anything from his Ethics class, of course the professor was already halfway through the book. It still pisses him off because after so many weeks of just bumming around his apartment, smoking, pissing and swallowing pills and just hating the world in general, he had felt ready, ready to go out and listen to his professors babble on about shit subjects that wouldn’t do him any good in the future. And of course the semester was already halfway through and what little he remembered from the beginning now’s worth shit. 

He had stood up, gathered his books, and left the classroom after thirty minutes. He inhaled half a pack of cigarettes on the bike ride back home. He is determined to finish the rest of it as he throws himself on the messy bed, and glares heatedly at the cracked ceiling. It is almost instinctual, to reach out towards the nightstand and just grab the first pill bottle his hand wraps around. Many bottles shift and fall to the floor, the pills rattling loudly before settling down. Castiel doesn’t even look at what he was taking; just pops the cap open and dry-swallows two small tablets.

Castiel is a chimney for the following minutes, smoke trailing up from his mouth and his nose and the cigarette in his hand. But instead of feeling calm, his heart just speeds up, his breathing elevates, his muscles spasm, and his pupils widen. 

Fuck, what was he doing, what was he doing, what was he doing? Third year of college and he’s messing everything up, and should he really be holing himself up in this crappy place? He should get out, go to class, fucking learn, drink hipster coffee with the rest of the fucking college students, Jesus Christ he’s so goddamn pale, he should pick up jogging again, out in the park where the sun will tan him nicely, and he should shave, and you know, maybe shower, because that was what human fucking beings did, didn’t they? They showered, and shaved, and ate— 

When was the last time he ate? Sweet motherfucker, he doesn’t fucking remember the last time he shoveled food into his mouth, and isn’t that the saddest thing ever? Here lies Castiel, died of hunger ‘cause he’s too goddamn stupid and lazy to go into the kitchen and, you know, cook something for his goddamn self.

And how can he do that? How can he not cook for himself, when his precious _oma_ from Mother Russia spent so many summer days teaching and teaching him every single recipe that she knew, because the heartless _hure_ of a mother he had was good for only one thing and that definitely was not cooking. _Oma_ Greta painstakingly guided him through every single magnificent process of the Russian cuisine. He shouldn’t forget her, shouldn’t forsake such valuable lessons— _Zharkoye_. Some _zharkoye_ would be right fucking nice right about now.

With that thought, Castiel heaves himself up from the bed, stabs the cigarette into the overflowing ashtray and single-mindedly goes into the kitchen to make his grandmother’s stew. His fingers twitch slightly, before grabbing onto the freezer’s handle, and pulling it open. 

There’s very few things left in the icebox, but the brunette’s feverish eyes settle on a plastic bag of meat at the far corner of the space. It’s beef, he discovers after pulling the thing out. Freezer-burned beef that says it was best sold fresh by a date that went by a whole month ago. The beef makes a loud clattering sound as it bounces onto the corner. 

Next, he’s shutting the freezer and opening the refrigerator, goes for the bottom right drawer where all the potatoes should be. Most of them are blackened, with white fuzz growing over them. Castiel grimaces, and digs through the rot for the best potatoes available. Turns out the best are also the smallest; they could be dirty brown golf balls for all he might know. The only good onion he finds is rubbery, the carrots are dried and their bright orange color is just starting to dull into something brownish. But it’s still good enough to be put into a stew, so he does just that; turning the stove on its highest setting, getting the water to boil, and just chopping up everything and throwing it into the pot, and fuck it, let the hot water defrost the ancient meat. He finds his forgotten spice rack over the refrigerator, and tosses every good spice he can find into the pot. It’s when it hits him. 

Sour cream. There’s no sour cream. Castiel dives for the fridge, wrenches it open, expects to find the sour cream sitting innocently in the middle of the empty machine, but there’s nothing there. Nothing but an old carton of milk that he really doesn’t even want to look at.

And of course there’s no sour cream. _Zharkoye_ cannot be _zharkoye_ without the sour cream, and his _oma_ would roll in her grave if she found out he made the stew without fucking sour cream, and goddamn it he just wants some fucking _zharkoye_. Is it too fucking much to fucking ask?

Castiel slams the fridge door shut, making the nearly empty glass bottles on the inside rattle together in muffled disharmony. He growls. Snorts and grumbles and growls at the fucking stupidity of it all, because all he wants is his grandmother’s stew, and there’s no fucking reason to not have fucking sour cream. The _zharkoye_ will not be ruined, it will not. Even if he has to fucking pedal the twenty fucking minutes it takes to get to the nearest supermarket he’s going to fucking get that cream and—aren’t the neighbors closer?

That kid, that kid, the one he gave a cigarette to a week ago. Was it a week ago? Fuck if he knows exactly, but yeah. Gave him a fag and now the kid owes him. He leaves the door to his apartment splayed wide open, and walks the ten steps to the right that will take him to the front door of the next apartment

One knock turns to three turns to ten and he forces himself to stop by digging his fingers into his hair and holding on to his cigarette for dear life. The door opens, and there’s the kid, all blonde hair and green eyes, and fucking pouty lips. The kid frowns and it’s ridiculous because he’s so young that the skin of his brow doesn’t line with wrinkles, not really.

“What?” the teenager asks and he sounds oh, so annoyed. Castiel thinks that is probably the only time he’s able to take snark. The next time it happens, he’s shoving his fist down someone’s throat.

“Sour cream,” he declares, wide gaze locking back to the green eyes.

The kid stiffens, brow furrowing even more. “What?” he asks again, clearly confused.

Castiel rolls his eyes, but tries to take a deep breath. Caught the kid by surprise, ain’t his fault he doesn’t know what he's babbling on about.

“I need sour cream. Do you have any?”

“Dude, I’ve never bought sour cream in my life.” With that pronouncement, the door starts to close on his face. 

“Fuck!” The expletive causes the teenager to startle and pause and that’s good. “Yogurt, then. Please tell me you’ve got yogurt.”

“The fuck you want yogurt for?”

“I need it! It’s important,” his answer is shaky as he inhales from his cigarette and forces back a sob because _Oma_ Greta’s recipe needed real sour cream, but fuck it, because this was as close as he was going to get.

“Fine, Jesus, fucking weirdo.” The door gets shut in his face. He counts to ten, really fast, the numbers slurring together. He does it eight times straight before the door opens again and he’s presented with a six-ounce cup of vanilla yogurt. It’s good enough, it has to be good enough. 

“Good enough?” the teenager asks with enough snark that Castiel’s arm twitches, but all he does with it is extend it in order to grab the cup. 

This is going to be the shittiest _zharkoye_ he’s ever going to make, it’s going to be a fucking insult to dear _Oma_ , he knows this. Just as much as he knows that he will eat what he can and just dump the rest down the kitchen drain. It’s going to be a waste. A great big waste of Russian stew down the kitchen drain.

“I’m having you for dinner,” Castiel blurts out, his mouth speaking before his mind can think. The young man’s eyebrows rise nearly to his hairline. Obviously, he took the phrase to mean something else, so Castiel tries to explain. “I’m making food. And you’re gonna eat it. You and that other little kid living here. You’re gonna eat it, cause I’m making too much and I fucking hate leftovers.” 

The brunette takes another drag from his cigarette—a deep, long pull this time—before turning around and stomping back to his apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope I made him just manic enough (think a low dose of a medication that contains ephedrine)

**Author's Note:**

> I have maybe a third of this story written out but unedited. I wanted to finish it all before posting it, but that plan doesn't seem to be helping my creativity. It is my theory that as I post a chapter, and receive responses from you guys, I'll make myself feel responsible for continuing to write out and update this story on a regular basis. As opposed to typing out a couple of sentences and then ignoring this work for a whole month -.-
> 
> You guys, I hope you like this!


End file.
